Chapter 1 Kansas City, Missouri, October 29 There was not enough brain bleach in the world to scrub away the things Rory Rainey had seen. Her visions were getting worse, and if she didn’t find the person who could make them stop, she was going to go bat shit crazy. As frequently as the mental images were slamming into her lately, that inevitable insanity conclusion wasn’t far away. Rory kept her head down and her gaze firmly on the sidewalk in front of her. While her eyes saw only dirt and concrete dimly lit by streetlights, her mind saw much, much more. A riot of TV shows and video screens blazed in her head, one image superimposed upon the next, until it was all merely a blobby glow of color and light. Nearby, someone was staring down at a newborn baby. Someone else was reading a book, but there was too much visual chaos in Rory’s head to make out the words. Brief glimpses of the same nearby sections of street fired in her mind, repeating over and over as the few people still out at the late hour drove by. As she moved down the street, she got close enough to a couple having sex in one of the surrounding buildings to catch what they were seeing. The man was all fleshy and sweating, his face red with effort. The harnesses and implements twisting the